The Road to Paris: Navigating the intergovernmental path to our climate commitments

Erich Hartmann, Caleb Holden, and Michael Crawford Urban

2017

The Road to Paris: Navigating the intergovernmental path to our climate commitments argues that Canada’s persistent inability to meet self-imposed greenhouse gas emission reduction targets stems not so much from a lack of will but rather from institutional challenges. Currently, Canada has fourteen separate federal, provincial, and territorial climate change policies, which need to be aligned in order to be effective. The problem, according to the report,is that Canada’s existing intergovernmental institutions are not up to the task.

The solution proposed by the reports authors, Erich Hartmann, Caleb Holden and Michael Crawford Urban lies in the creation of a new intergovernmental institution. This new institution would use evidence-based analysis to advise the fourteen separate governments on how to advance their policies within a national framework. Additionally, because the cost of climate mitigation is born unequally across the country, it would guide federal spending so as to mitigate the economic impact of emissions reductions and assist in sharing the burden of the economic impacts that emission reduction policies engender.

The Road to Paris makes the case that new and innovative intergovernmental institutional frameworks are required to overcome various obstacles – such as diverging regional interests and significant economic diversity – that have “scuttled previous efforts”.